Famous Questions Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Questions poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous questions poems. These examples illustrate what a famous questions poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Anne Sexton
Because there was no other place
to flee to,
I came back to the scene of the disordered senses,
came back last night at midnight,
arriving in the thick June night
without luggage or defenses,
giving up my car keys and my cash,
keeping only a pack of Salem cigarettes
the way a child holds on to a toy.
I signed myself in where a stranger
puts the inked-in...Read more of this...
by
Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
What did I study in your School of Night?
When your mouth's first unfathomable yes
Opened your body to be my book, I read
My answers there and learned the spell aright,
Yet, though I searched and searched, could never guess
What spirits it raised nor where their questions led.
Those others, familiar tenants of your sleep,
The whisperers,...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
In the rectory garden on his evening walk
Paced brisk Father Shawn. A cold day, a sodden one it was
In black November. After a sliding rain
Dew stood in chill sweat on each stalk,
Each thorn; spiring from wet earth, a blue haze
Hung caught in dark-webbed branches like a fabulous heron.
Hauled sudden from solitude,
Hair prickling on his head,
Father Shawn perceived a ghost
Shaping...Read more of this...
by
Adrienne Rich
1.
A conversation begins
with a lie. and each
speaker of the so-called common language feels
the ice-floe split, the drift apart
as if powerless, as if up against
a force of nature
A poem can being
with a lie. And be torn up.
A conversation has other laws
recharges itself with its own
false energy, Cannot be torn
up. Infiltrates our blood. Repeats itself.
Inscribes...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
‘Fall in, that awkward squad, and strike no more
Attractive attitudes! Dress by the right!
The luminous rich colours that you wore
Have changed to hueless khaki in the night.
Magic? What’s magic got to do with you?
There’s no such thing! Blood’s red, and skies are blue.’
They gasped and sweated, marching up and down.
I drilled them till...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams
hurry too rapidly down to the sea,
and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops
makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion,
turning to waterfalls under our very eyes.
--For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains,
aren't waterfalls yet,
in a quick age or so,...Read more of this...
by
Billy Collins
All afternoon I have been struggling
to communicate in Italian
with Roberto and Giuseppe, who have begun
to resemble the two male characters
in my Italian for Beginners,
the ones who are always shopping
or inquiring about the times of trains,
and now I can hardly speak or write English.
I have made important pronouncements
in this remote limestone valley
with its trickle of a river,
stating that it seems...Read more of this...
by
Richard Brautigan
I don't know what it is,
but I distrust myself
when I start to like a girl
a lot.
It makes me nervous.
I don't say the right things
or perhaps I start
to examine,
evaluate,
compute
what I am saying.
If I say, "Do you think it's going to rain?"
and she says, "I don't know,"
I start...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
1915
Whence comest thou, Gehazi,
So reverend to behold,
In scarlet and in ermines
And chain of England's gold?"
"From following after Naaman
To tell him all is well,
Whereby my zeal hath made me
A Judge in Israel."
Well done; well done, Gehazi!
Stretch forth thy ready hand,
Thou barely 'scaped from judgment,
Take oath to judge the land
Unswayed by gift of money
Or...Read more of this...
by
C S Lewis
Lead us, Evolution, lead us
Up the future's endless stair;
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.
For stagnation is despair:
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,
Lead us nobody knows where.
Wrong or justice, joy or sorrow,
In the present what are they
while there's always jam-tomorrow,
While we tread the onward way?
Never knowing where we're going,
We can never go astray.
To whatever variation
Our posterity may turn
Hairy, squashy, or...Read more of this...
by
Julia Ward Howe
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have...Read more of this...
by
Oliver Wendell Holmes
THROUGH my north window, in the wintry weather,--
My airy oriel on the river shore,--
I watch the sea-fowl as they flock together
Where late the boatman flashed his dripping oar.
The gull, high floating, like a sloop unladen,
Lets the loose water waft him as it will;
The duck, round-breasted as a rustic maiden,
Paddles and plunges, busy, busy still.
I see the solemn gulls in...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
Yes, it was like you to forget,
And cancel in the welcome of your smile
My deep arrears of debt,
And with the putting forth of both your hands
To sweep away the bars my folly set
Between us -- bitter thoughts, and harsh demands,
And reckless deeds that seemed untrue
To love, when all the while
My heart was aching through...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
The inward witness to Christianity.
1 Jn. 5:10.
Questions and doubts be heard no more,
Let Christ and joy be all our theme;
His Spirit seals his gospel sure,
To every soul that trusts in him.
Jesus, thy witness speaks within;
The mercy which thy words reveal
Refines the heart from sense and sin,
And stamps its own celestial seal.
'Tis God's inimitable hand
That molds and forms the heart...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous
Before we close our eyes to-night,Oh, let us each these questions ask!Have we endeavored to do right,Nor thought our duty a hard task?Have we been gentle, lowly, meek,And the small voice of conscience heard?When passion tempted us to speak,Have we repressed the angry word?Have we with cheerful zeal obeyedWhat our kind parents bade us do?And not by word or action...Read more of this...
by
Wendell Berry
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want...Read more of this...
by
Bertolt Brecht
Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished
Who raised it up so many times? In what houses
of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?
Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finnished
Did the masons go? Great Rome
Is full of...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
Suddenly the window will open
and Mother will call
it's time to come in
the wall will part
I will enter heaven in muddy shoes
I will come to the table
and answer questions rudely
I am all right leave me
alone. Head in hand I
sit and sit. How can I tell them
about that long
and tangled way.
Here in heaven mothers
knit green scarves
flies buzz
Father dozes by the stove
after...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
King Eochaid came at sundown to a wood
Westward of Tara. Hurrying to his queen
He had outridden his war-wasted men
That with empounded cattle trod the mire,
And where beech-trees had mixed a pale green light
With the ground-ivy's blue, he saw a stag
Whiter than curds, its eyes the tint of the sea.
Because it stood upon his path and seemed
More hands in height...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
THE LADY.
IN the small and great world too,
What most charms a woman's heart?
It is doubtless what is new,
For its blossoms joy impart;
Nobler far is what is true,
For fresh blossoms it can shoot
Even in the time of fruit.
THE YOUNG GENTLEMAN.
With the Nymphs in wood and cave
Paris was acquainted well,
Till Zeus sent, to make him rave,
Three of those in Heav'n who...Read more of this...
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
All this stood upon her and was the world
and stood upon her with all its fear and grace
as trees stand, growing straight up, imageless
yet wholly image, like the Ark of God,
and solemn, as if imposed upon a race.
As she endured it all: bore up under
the swift-as-flight, the fleeting, the far-gone,
the inconceivably vast, the still-to-learn,
serenely as a woman carrying water
moves...Read more of this...
by
William Blake
What is it men in women do require?
The lineaments of Gratified Desire.
What is it women do in men require?
The lineaments of Gratified Desire.
The look of love alarms
Because 'tis fill'd with fire;
But the look of soft deceit
Shall Win the lover's hire.
Soft Deceit & Idleness,
These are Beauty's sweetest dress.
He who binds to himself a joy
Dot the winged life destroy;
But he who...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XIII. Io mi rivolgo indietro a ciascun passo. ON QUITTING LAURA. With weary frame which painfully I bear,I look behind me at each onward pace,And then take comfort from your native air,Which following fans my melancholy face;[Pg 13]The far way, my frail life, the cherish'd fairWhom...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
BY day the skyscraper looms in the smoke and sun and
has a soul.
Prairie and valley, streets of the city, pour people into
it and they mingle among its twenty floors and are
poured out again back to the streets, prairies and
valleys.
It is the men and women, boys and girls so poured in and
out all day that give the building a soul...Read more of this...
by
W S Merwin
What is the head
A. Ash
What are the eyes
A. The wells have fallen in and have
Inhabitants
What are the feet
A. Thumbs left after the auction
No what are the feet
A. Under them the impossible road is moving
Down which the broken necked mice push
Balls of blood with their noses
What is the tongue
A. The black coat...Read more of this...
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